http://online.securityfocus.com/news/1760 By Ramit Plushnick-masti The Associated Press Dec 8 2002 Israeli police, aided by the FBI, have arrested an Israeli suspected of hacking into computers of a U.S.-based electronics company and stealing personal information, including credit card numbers, of some 80,000 customers, according to a court document released Sunday. David Sternberg, 24, of the port city of Haifa, was arrested late Friday while driving in a stolen car, police said. The FBI notified the Israelis he was wanted in 2000 and police began searching for him in 2001, according to the transcript of his detention hearing. Sternberg allegedly broke into the computers of a large U.S. company that sells CD-ROMs and DVDs, but police refused to release the name of the company. The court document also did not mention the company's name. "It's a company in the (United) States. The FBI had been in connection with us about this case. ... He (Sternberg) was listed as wanted for investigation," police spokesman Gil Kleiman said. The U.S. Embassy spokesman said he had no immediate information about the case. The judge wrote in the hearing transcript that the evidence against him was sound and extended his detention until Monday. Sternberg is suspected of illegally breaking into the company's computers to acquire customers' personal information and use it to commit further crimes, the court document said. Police requested the judge allow them to impound Sternberg's computers, the transcript said. Three men were accused last month in the United States of carrying out a US$2.7 million high-tech scam, the biggest in history. According to the charges, the men sold the credit reports of their company's customers, victimizing more than 30,000 people, some of whom discovered bank accounts drained, addresses changed and new credit cards ordered without their approval. A well-known Israeli hacker who called himself "the Analyzer" was accused in 1998 of infiltrating the U.S. Pentagon computer system. Ehud Tenenbaum, who was 18 at the time of his arrest, was suspected of being the mentor of two other California teenagers. His intrusions were described by a Pentagon spokesman as the most organized and systematic attack the department had seen. In more than two years of Israeli-Palestinian violence, cyberwar has become an integral part of the fighting as Israeli and Palestinian hackers attack rival websites and computers, crashing, jamming and overwriting systems. - ISN is currently hosted by Attrition.org To unsubscribe email majordomoat_private with 'unsubscribe isn' in the BODY of the mail.
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